The shtick movie “Paranormal Activity 3” is the horror equivalent of vaudeville comedy: a little patter, a little pie in the face, repeat.
The two sisters who were possessed by household demons in the first two films this time are little girls back in 1988. Video cameras were approximately the size of Yugos, but never mind the convenience factor. For no clear reason, their stepdad Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith) persists in videotaping the increasingly weird goings-on at his suburban California house, even long after you or I would have moved out (or called 1-800-GHOSTBUSTERS).
His behavior is eerie … strange … uncanny … it’s almost like he’s more interested in providing material for a horror movie than actually saving his life. And he’s willing to lug around a giant camera recording everything even after he witnesses the life-threatening doings of “Toby,” the imaginary friend of his apparently possessed daughter Kristi, who tells her parents she and this unseen being like to talk about “secrets” that she cannot share.
Mostly, this movie is “Paranormal Activity 2 1/2 .” Unlike the first film, which was genuinely inventive and exciting in taking a slightly new angle on the “Blair Witch” home-movie style, the third episode is predictably “shocking.” The way it sets itself up, you know there is going to be 70 minutes of aggressive banality followed by 10 minutes of banal aggression.
In the daytime scenes, Dennis and his wife, Julie (Lauren Bittner), talk about the various things that go bash and thump, laugh nervously, and discover what’s on the videotapes they recorded with three stationary cameras overnight.
In the night scenes, we observe through the video cameras the couple sleeping, their two daughters in their twin beds, or the downstairs, where (a slightly new wrinkle here) a camera is attached to a slowly oscillating fan, meaning we can only see part of the room at any one time. Each of these scenes involves the supposed build-up of “suspense” which is really just killing time until we get to the punchline gag every five minutes or so.
The experience is this: Wait … wait … wait … OH MY GOD SUCH A LOUD NOISE. A LAMP FELL!!! Oh. A lamp fell.
Cut, repeat the above, this time with a sheet, or a bunch of pots, or a kid suddenly sprinting past. You shriek (if you’re an idiot, anyway), then laugh because you feel stupid about how easily you’ve been played. And you wait for the big finale. Given that we know at the outset the two little girls must survive to be in the other two films, things do not bode well for the grown-ups.
In a way, the movie is a small improvement on the dull second episode because it brings in a new background element that slightly enriches the story. But this factor doesn’t make a lot of sense, raises more questions than it answers and is anyway ripped off from a really famous horror movie. What was true of “PA 2” is true of this one also: No one will watch it twice.